Dakiya dak laya still works

Remember the Indian Postal Service? It is still there though an eminent journalist had once put it on the top list of wasteful and archaic departments that should be liquidated to cut down on the huge deficit that the Indian budget sports year after year.

In this cyber era of emails, e-rakhis, e-gifts, e-pujas, e-exams and what not, not to talk of trackable services like the DHL and Fedex, indeed, the inland letter looks like a long buried casualty.

My personal memories of the dak sewa are happy ones. My uncle, who is no more, used to make me run down three storeyes from hisbarsati in WE Area of Channa Market in Karol Bagh almost every other evening at 4.30 pm sharp to buy stamps, inland letters and postcards from the red coloured mobile postal van that used to park itself for an hour daily on the road under our home.

The bribe used to be an added Rs 1 for toffees (chocolates were not so hot then) from the adjacent Sindhi Sweet House.

My uncle was also a fan of my writing. He thought it was not only neat but also very beautiful. So, I was made to regularly write letters to his distant relatives, sisters, uncles and even his brothers. Once done, the ritual used to be to run down those high steps yet again to drop them into the red box down below.

All my summer holidays, as a matter of routine, used to be spent at this frugal barsati as my father used to insist that it was our duty to visit my uncle every year without fail.

On a memory trip 25 years later, I recently checked out what was happening to WE Area in these modern days. The building where thebarsati was still stands though its height now looks stunted from those days when I was a child and thought it was the highest building in the world.

To my amazement, that mobile red van still comes there everyday and dutifully parks itself where it did all those eons ago. The man at the sale counter, however, told me that not many come to buy the stuff anymore. Feeling sad and nostalgic about an era that has gone by, I returned to present day where calling up DHL and Fedex has become routine for courier sending.

However, it was on one particular occasion that I accidentally returned to the Indian Postal Service and discovered, to my utter amazement, that not only are they still in form but also much much cheaper and more reliable than their dented reputation would make them seem.

Wanting to send a courier packet for a friend to Europe, the occasion being her daughter’s birthday, I found out that a Fedex packet would cost me twice as much as the consignment being sent. Someone suggested the IPS and I scoffed at the idea.

However, when I reluctantly went to the post office across the street of my office, I could not believe my ears. The man at the counter told me the IPS has a courier service to any part of the world. It is registered, it is fast, it always reaches its destination and, most importantly it is dirt cheap. With a thousand doubts in my mind, I gave the packet to them. They said it would cost me Rs 300 and the packet would take a week to 10 days to reach. The Fedex packet would have taken three to four days but would have cost me Rs 2000!

Seeing all the doubts on my face, the postal man told me to give it a try. “Yes, you will not be able to track it online and yes it will take a few more days but it will reach the person and without damage. Try it out,” he said. The packet reached the desired destination within a week and in one piece!

Yes, it is the Indian Postal System, it still works and it has moved with the times. So get back to it, as also to that inland letter your father, mother, uncle, aunt may be delighted to get from you in your handwriting. Sometimes, a letter means much more than that regular phone call. It would also boost an institution called the Indian Postal Service.

Publish August 9, 2009; http://www.dailypioneer.com/194536/Dakiya-dak-laya-still-works.html